Drawing on third-wave feminist and Bakhtinian literary theories, this article argues that the feminist possibility of young adult romance novels largely lies in the extent to which the authors’ narrative choices encourage readers to grapple with questions related to love, pleasure, and relationships, rather than in parsing the author’s intended or unintended feminist (or anti-feminist) messages. This article examines the techniques diverse authors of young adult romances use to open up heteroglossic spaces in their texts. Specifically, it examines how these authors of young adult romances invite readers to consciously attend to the ways that love and relationships might operate in their lives. In particular, the analysis explores the feminist possibilities of love triangles and the use of dialogue to raise reader questions about their own beliefs about the nature of love. These dialogic craft choices are contrasted with more authoritative ways of approaching issues of love and pleasure in fiction to argue that romance is at its most liberatory when it poses questions rather than provides answers.
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All the books included in this essay meet the Romance Writers of America definition of romance (i.e., a central love story and an emotionally satisfying, optimistic ending), although stories varied in the complexity and seriousness of the subplots. As part of a broader research project, I identified and read thirty young adult contemporary romances (Appendix A) published between 2015 and 2020 that focused on relationships between straight boys and girls. To select these books, I drew on reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal as well as reader-curated lists on the website Goodreads. I read no more than two books by each author, and I worked to ensure that the pool of authors included were racially and ethnically diverse.
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